


Curiosity

by Sakiku



Category: Transformers (Bay Movies)
Genre: Nipple Piercings, Other, Piercings, Xeno, Xenophilia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 06:54:55
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,177
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/582538
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sakiku/pseuds/Sakiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>How does one initiate sex across species? Jazz <i>could</i> blame his orders, but to be honest, it was Maggie's piercings.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Yet another tf_anonkink prompt: <http://tfanonkink.livejournal.com/10462.html?thread=9781982#t9781982>

“You know, I had a nose ring once,” Maggie commented out of the blue.  
   
Jazz startled and looked at the human. This was one of the rare occasions that both of them were in their shared quarters at the same time. Jazz had come off a shift at surveillance an hour ago, and Maggie was having one of her rare days off. She was lounging on her bed and reading a book, clad only in some lacy red underwear that was probably considered 'sexy' by males, according to Jazz's understanding of human culture.  
   
It wasn't unusual for the feisty analyst to wear little to nothing in their quarters – Diego Garcia was quite hot for humans, and while Jazz could twist his processors into the skewed logic necessary to understand human modesty, there was certainly no need for Maggie to be uncomfortable in private, too.  
   
After reviving Jazz with one of the remaining shards of the All-Spark, Optimus had asked him to partner a human, like Ironhide had done with Will and Ratchet with Mikaela. But while there certainly had been an altruistic component to the request – the Autobots could grant financial security, life-long friendship, and medical attention far beyond what humans were currently capable of – the Matrix didn't make Optimus a saint. The more ties the Autobots had to humanity and the more humans spoke on their behalf, the harder it would be for humans as a collective to form the decision and get rid of them.  
   
So Jazz had looked for a potential partner amongst NEST personnel stationed at Diego Garcia, trying to find a human that wouldn't mind Jazz' appointment to head of security in RedAlert's absence, his job as unofficial moral officer, and his position as SpecOps commander.  
   
Of course, having a compatible personality matrix was first priority, and there had been quite a few potential candidates based on that alone. But it hadn't been until RAND had fired Maggie Madsen for yet another breach in conduct and NEST had snatched her up in a pinch, that Jazz had found what he had been looking for: curious, intelligent, interested in at least one of Jazz's fields of occupation, trustworthy, outgoing, and – most importantly – not intimidated in the least by robots three to five times their size.  
   
It had certainly been a bonus that Maggie had started out working directly under Jazz because of her field of expertise. Her knowledge in data and security analysis had been a much-needed boon to the Autobots' thin-spread forces. Back then, Mirage and the others hadn't landed yet, and so Jazz and Maggie had practically done the job of surveillance and security all on their own. It had given Jazz quite a lot of time and interaction with the head-strong female, and it hadn't taken more than a couple of days for Jazz to run down his checklist and pronounce her suitable on all accounts.  
   
Convincing her to move into his quarters had been the next step. Jazz had worked hard on building an equal friendship between them rather than one of boss and employee. And his efforts had paid off. By the time Private Johnson (the woman in the room right next to Maggie at that time) had found a very active and loud bed-mate, they had built up enough of a rapport that Maggie hadn't hesitated long before vacating her old quarters in favor of Jazz's.  
   
From then on, it had been smooth sailing. More than smooth sailing, actually. Jazz hadn't thought that she would become so comfortable around him that she stopped adhering to all those strange social rules of what to do and not to do when in company of humans – modesty being only a small part of it. She was one of the very few on base who didn't try to humanize the Autobots or, on the other extreme of the spectrum, see them as nothing but intelligent machines.  
   
She had rationalized aloud her complete lack of modesty in his presence one time. She had told him that she didn't see him as a human or, more importantly a man, and that this made all the difference for her. Just as she wouldn't have any problems undressing with a chimpanzee or a dog watching, she didn't have any trouble of doing it with Jazz in the room because there was absolutely no sexual component to it. And yes, she knew that that comparison was faulty to a degree because she was quite aware that Jazz was a lot more intelligent than a chimpanzee, but there simply was no earthly analog to Transformers. She knew him too well to believe he had the same preconceptions about sexuality and the corresponding personality as humans did. Not that she saw him or expected him to see her in a sexual light. That would be like lusting after a... a dolphin or a hamster; completely incompatible on a biological scale.  
   
Jazz had kept silent towards that last part, because he had no intention of destroying their easy-going friendship that had still been quite new at that point in time. He was very well aware of the stigma associated with human-animal sexuality.  
   
Humans were simply too unaccustomed to dealing with other intelligent species to have developed any attitude but disgust at sexual behavior towards beings outside their own species. They still had too many hang-ups about their own sexuality to realize that exchanging pleasure between two fully consenting individuals (biologically compatible frames or not) was nothing to be ashamed for. Or that one was allowed to appreciate physical features of an alien biology, even in a sexual sense, without it being considered morally unclean.  
   
It certainly didn't prevent Jazz's attention from wandering towards Maggie's belly-button piercing every time she exposed it or, more rarely, that piercing through her left nipple. He had always known they were there, because clothes were about as much of a hindrance for his scanners as gauze was for humans. But the visual input of hard steel going through infinitely soft, organic skin...  
   
It made something shiver inside Jazz, and he had to take care not to show any outward reaction.  
   
However, it seemed that Maggie had caught on to his fascination with piercings – otherwise her sudden statement of having had a nose ring didn't make any sense. She probably didn't know anything definite yet; having watched her work her analysis, Jazz was quite well aware that she was in the experimental phase right now. She was doing some tests and waiting for his reactions to either prove or disprove her hypothesis. And of course, she was idly playing with her belly-button piercing, angled just right that he could see the steel sliding beneath her skin.  
   
He had been wondering when they would reach that point. Maggie was highly observant, and it had been only a question of time until she noticed his preoccupation or until someone clued her in. Question was: was she ready for the answer now?  
   
Jazz decided, and set his data-pad aside. Giving the human his full attention, he asked a polite, “You did?”  
   
Maggie nodded and looked up from her book as if she hadn't been watching him from the corner of her eyes the entire time. “Yes, I did. Had to take it out though to get that job at RAND.”  
   
“Why?” It took about half a second to research the answer himself, but it was more interesting hearing Maggie's take on it.  
   
She shrugged deceptively nonchalantly. “Because getting pierced, except maybe the earlobes, is not what normal, upstanding people do. And most companies only hire normal, upstanding people.”  
   
“You are thinking about getting your nose-ring back?”  
   
Maggie blinked, and that finger that had been twirling her belly-button piercing stilled. “You wouldn't mind? Optimus wouldn't mind?”  
   
Jazz cocked his head. “Why would we? It would be highly hypocritical of us, after all.”  
   
“It would?” Maggie's curiosity was clearly hooked, as had been Jazz's intention. “Why?”  
   
He returned her earlier shrug tit for tat. “All of us have made modifications to our dermal plates that are quite similar to what you are doing with a piercing. Just because your human senses can't see them, it doesn't mean they aren't there.”  
   
Laying her book down, Maggie sat up on the bed and crossed her legs to get in a comfortable position. Then she proceeded to give him a critical once-over. “You're right,” she had to admit, “I don't see them.”  
   
Jazz chuckled and rested two of his claws on the bed next to her, finger pads turned upward. “You see those small, circular spots that look a bit different from the metal around them? That is the most you will see of our piercings, and only with those that are in unimportant plates. Before the war that was different, but nowadays...”  
   
“Anything compromising the structural integrity of your armor plates could be dangerous,” she finished his train of thought and nodded slowly while she was tracing Jazz's finger. Her keen observational skills easily picked out all the piercings visible to her, and he could see her coming up with theories and conclusions. “Kind of like fighters take out all piercings before a fight to minimize the risk of being harmed by them.” She thought for a bit and then grimaced. “No, I don't think that's it. You said you still have them; I just can't see them. It's not just inlaying your plates with bits of foreign metal then?”  
   
Jazz smiled. “No. The original practice consisted of drilling a small hole into the dermal plate down to the microfilament layer, then inserting a tiny electromagnet. What you do afterwards depends on what kind of effect you're going for. You can either let it heal closed on its own, or insert a conductive metal rod that reaches from the core of the coil to the surface of the dermal plate and then let it heal closed. That is what I did with those you can see on my fingers. Another practice was instructing your nanobots to heal the metal above it with a slight nub. Makes for some very interesting optical patterns.”  
   
Maggie was hanging on to his every word with rapture. “I can see why you don't want that on any major armor plates in a battle situation. How do you do it now?”  
   
Jazz shrugged. “When you've got enough down-time and are quite sure that nobody will attack, you can still let it heal closed on its own. That only takes a week or two, depending on how many metal supplements you can take. Or you go the easy way – strip the dermal plate, place the magnets where you want them, and then fit the dermal plate above them again. It will be uncomfortable for a couple of days until the nanobots have reconfigured the protoform and the dermal layer to accommodate what essentially amounts to a foreign body, but then you'll be set.”  
   
“That sounds really similar to implants to me, dermal anchors and the likes, ” Maggie mused thoughtfully. Then she frowned. “So, why do you have piercings – dermal implants –“  
   
“Armor inlays,” Jazz provided as the correct word for his body modifications.  
   
“ – Armor inlays, thanks, why do you have them at all? Is it for the visual effect only, or is it some... rebellious teen-age thing equivalent?”  
   
Jazz chuckled. There were some things that didn't translate well across the species boundaries. And teenage rebellion was definitely one of those. As far as Jazz understood human biology, the teenage development state consisted of those years where the reproductive subprograms were initialized and installed in the consciousness, and where the new sparklings made their first true forays into independence from their progenitors. Since Transformers didn't reproduce, the first point was moot. And the second one – well, seeing that a newly sparked shell was by far less dependent than human newborns, the process of striving for self-governance was by far less traumatic and virulent than the human equivalent.  
   
“Not teenage rebellion, no,” he smiled. “I think calling armor inlays piercings is a bit misleading in that sense. They are far more accepted than piercings are in your culture. Think of it more like... waxing.”  
   
Maggie nearly choked on her spit. “Waxing? Like polishing-your-car waxing? What you do every now and then to protect your armor plates?” she repeated incredulously.  
   
Jazz shook his head. “No, the waxing humans do for hair removal. That is a kind of body modification in the furthest sense after all. How much you wax, or if you wax at all, is a personal decision. But all choices are accepted equally.”  
   
“There's just so many holes I could poke into that kind of comparison...” Maggie mumbled to herself. Then she frowned, glaring up at Jazz' amused facial plates. “You're distracting me again. I'm still waiting for you to tell me what purpose your armor inlays serve.”  
   
Chuckling, Jazz lifted his claws in surrender. “Touchy, touchy. About the same purpose as human piercings, I'd say, as long as you take out the part where you do it to rebel against social norms. Fashion statement. Catching attention. Art.” He paused briefly to ensnare her attention even further. “And of course, stimulation.”  
   
Her respiration pattern stalled briefly, but then she continued as if her pheromone levels hadn't just jumped an entire notch. “Stimulation? For yourself, or for a partner? How?”  
   
Oh yes, she was interested. “How? The microfilament layer is what bonds our armor plates to our protoform. Having an electromagnet down in that layer means that my protoform can connect to it and power it. Depending on the amount of potential I generate for that electromagnet, I can create a small, localized magnetic field. Nothing much, just about strong enough to pick up a couple of paper-clips.” Well, maybe a bit stronger. But definitely nothing compared to the incredibly powerful magnets Jazz had installed in his hands. Now those were weapons in the truest sense. Directed right into a mech's chassis, Jazz could do horrific damage with them – down to extinguishing a mech's spark. Directed outward he could disarm quite a few opponents.  
   
“And you can feel that magnetic field? Probably because you're entirely made of metal...” She looked at his claws with an almost hungry gaze.  
   
Jazz nodded. “Our thick armor plates prevent us from being as tactile a species as you humans are. We make up for it with sensitivity in other areas. What you gain from touching, we do by feeling electromagnetic currents.”  
   
“So if I took a bar magnet and waved it over your plates?”  
   
“I would certainly feel it.”  
   
She looked at him shrewdly. “You said stimulation. Would you also enjoy it?”  
   
Jazz took care that his amusement only showed in his electromagnetics. Something humans weren't equipped to sense. “Moving a magnet over my plates is about the same as someone stroking your skin. If you don't like the person doing it, it gets very hard enjoying the stimulation. If you do though...”  
   
He trailed off and left the ball in her court again. He was curious what she was going to do now – her elevated biological functions certainly indicated that she was to equal measures aroused and uncomfortable, which she was trying to hide from her body language by covering it with simple curiosity. Would she have the courage to ask whether Jazz would enjoy it if she was the one to wave the magnet?  
   
Suddenly she blinked and made one of those human logic leaps that would have had Prowl fritzing trying to keep up. “You had the Allspark. So you don't have... sex, do you?”  
   
Thankfully, Jazz was not Prowl. And thankfully, he'd had time to become used to human thought process. He could practically see the whole slew of assumptions and word definitions that had gone into that one question. Cycling his vents, Jazz started clearing up the misconceptions.  
   
“Well depends on what you mean by 'sex'. 'Sex' as in trying unite sexually dimorphic equipment constructed solely for that purpose – no. Not 'sex' as in trying to reproduce, either. But even you humans don't only have sex to procreate, do you?”  
   
“So you do have sex, but only to show someone you... like them? To form attachment?” She blinked several times, obviously trying to wrap her head around that concept. “How do you have sex anyway? If you don't have any... what did you call it? 'Sexually dimorphic equipment constructed solely for reproductive purposes'? If you don't have any of that, what do you do for intimacy? Link your processors together?”  
   
“Yes.”  
   
“And you like that?”  
   
Jazz chuckled slightly at her disbelief. It probably did seem odd to humans with all their hang-ups about privacy and modesty and individuality. “You know, there is the theory that in the beginning, we all were one inside Primus' spark. No loneliness, no worries or fears. It is said that interfacing is so pleasurable for us because it reminds us a bit of that state of... paradise, I guess. A merging of processors or even sparks, it is one of the most rewarding experiences between bots. But you mustn't forget – since we don't reproduce, our primary pleasure responses are geared towards social bonding. Otherwise, a species as diverse as ours would have split apart into different breeds a long time ago.”  
   
Maggie nodded slowly, her brain trying to keep up with all the new information. “So... I guess that means pair-bonding like we humans do is quite unusual for you? You've got big social groups that are glued together by sharing – interfacing? – and as such human concepts like fidelity and prudery must sound pretty strange to you.”  
   
“Just like our attitude on pleasure being nothing but a show of friendship must be to you,” Jazz smiled. The reproductive instinct was wired so deeply into human biology that they probably could hardly imagine a society where that kind of drive didn't exist. Even with those sharing pleasure not for reproductive purposes, the fact that pleasure was hard-wired to reproductive organs was an immutable constant.  
   
There was a long pause during which Jazz could practically see Maggie processing everything so far. He was very interested in what conclusion the female was going to come to, not least of all as a test run of how humans could react to such knowledge. Jazz harbored no illusions of how the majority of humanity would react if they made it public that Transformers had sex at all, much less of the hows and whys. But select individuals that had had time to use their ingrained human adaptability to get used to mechs? He wondered if his revelations were going to make his interactions with Maggie uncomfortable because she suddenly saw him as a being with sexual needs and thus tried to apply her human sexual conventions to him.  
   
She cocked her head. “So neither you nor Optimus would mind me getting a nose ring again?”  
   
Jazz couldn't help a startled laugh. “Of course not.”  
   
That non-sequitur had caught him completely off-guard. Some hasty calculations revealed with some 90 percent probability that it was a signal to end their talk because Maggie needed time to properly process everything. Only some 5 percent indicated that it was because she was disgusted and didn't want to know anything else about Transformer intimacy. She simply was too curious for that, and her biological signs didn't signal rejection despite a small amount of discomfort.  
   
“Alright,” she nodded and reclined back onto her bed, picking up her book again. “I'll think about it.”  
   
And she started playing with her belly-button piercing again, deliberately so that he could get a full view of it.  
   
Jazz laughed again, suddenly certain that things were going to be alright between them. “You do that.”  
   
This time he let his optics linger on the steel sliding beneath human skin a tiny bit longer than strictly necessary, and he caught the brief flash of satisfaction in her eyes. Then he turned back to his data-pad with a smile. Most human adapting and cross-referencing was done during their off-hours, and she certainly had gotten enough information to need some undisturbed processing. It was going to be interesting to see where this was going to go after she had had some recharge.  
   
He was looking forward to it.


	2. Chapter 2

The next day, everything was back to normal. Both Maggie and Jazz were on shift as if nothing had happened between them. Maggie didn't mention their conversation, and so neither did Jazz. What the mech did notice was the increased amount of thoughtful glances Maggie threw his way when she thought he was preoccupied with something else. But it didn't make a discernible difference to their interactions, so he let her be. Give her organic processors time to do their lateral thinking.

In a sense, it was even good that she was still mulling over things. It meant that she wasn't going into denial or simply considering those revelations not worth reacting to.

Several days later, after Maggie had had another day off, the first changes happened. Jazz was on the second half of his shift manning the communications feed when she came into the control room for hers. His routine scan revealed several interesting facts: for one, she had indeed gotten that nose piercing she had been talking about, not through the center but to one side. The other interesting tidbit of information his scans revealed was that she had exchanged all her piercings, which had been made from surgical steel and thus nonconducting, to a ferromagnetic material. Well, except for the still healing nose stud.

Jazz smiled widely. The nose stud did interest him, but the ferromagnetic metal was by far the more exciting. “Looks good on you,” he called out to her, and the gleam in her eyes told him that she had understood that he wasn't only talking about the visible jewelry.

“Thanks!”

Seemed like her processing had come to some interesting conclusions. A dare, if Jazz was reading the signals correctly. And Jazz was never one to back off a dare.

So, while he was acting completely normal outwardly, he did make good use of those armor inlays in his digits that he had shown her. They _were_ a bit stronger than picking up simple paper clips. Every time he had an opportunity to pass his hand in front of her body without disturbing the computer equipment, he activated the magnets resting against his protoform. And, like the good ferromagnetic jewelry they were, the piercings followed his call. It wasn't enough to do more than jostle them slightly, but it did elevate her biosignals quite nicely.

Red Alert, currently jacked in to the security feeds, was starting to catch on to his game and gave him a dirty look. Jazz merely smiled and pinged him with a condensed version of his field experiment on human reactions to xeno-sexuality. He received an eyeroll over comline for his efforts, but Red didn't say anything. Partial victory, or something.

Since human shifts were adjusted to the rotation of their planet, Maggie got off a lot sooner than he did, a nice flush to her skin. Jazz winked at her as she gathered her things, not that she had brought many seeing that they lived and worked in practically the same building.

“Sweet dreams!” he called out to her, hopefully inserting enough nuances to his voice that the implicated secondary meaning carried over. In Cybertronian, he would have added the sexual innuendo via subglyphs; in English he had to do with voice modulations. The slight increase in blood flow and the non-serious glare she threw him were a very good indicator that she had indeed gotten the message. And, true to her character, she didn't let the taunt slide by unanswered.

“Enjoy the rest of your shift while I do some nice and relaxing recharging!”

The brush of her hand by first her belly-button piercing and then her nipple ring _might_ have been accidental; however Jazz very much doubted that.

“Thanks,” he pouted to her bright laughter and went back to monitoring the communications feed. Let the games begin. Or, well, continue.

Although they didn't have more than an hour or two of total shared down-time over the next two weeks, Maggie did make good use of the few minutes they had in private. One time, she was changing her belly-button piercing just as he came in. That could have been coincidence, but could have been deliberate just as well. In the spirit of their game, Jazz had flopped lazily onto his berth and observed her, carefully keeping down the zipping electric charges the optic input sent through his neural lines.

He didn't know yet how she would react to blatant interest that she could only interpret as sexual. Depending on her mind-set, her processors might have rationalized away his use of his armor inlays as simple teasing. A bodily reaction to her actions though, that would be different. He'd get her used to him slowly to not overwhelm her.

Maggie only upped the ante. Another time she was taking a shower in her adjoined bathroom and had forgotten to close the door – the bathroom door he could have understood, but the shower door, too? And she was turned just the right way that he could catch the profile of her breasts with the piercing pebbling her nipple attractively. Since the running shower had covered the sound, he _had_ let his secondary cooling fans rumble to life and watched for any half-hidden glimpse of steel through flesh.

And then there were the times he could smell that she had overloaded herself either during his absence or, more and more as of late, during his recharge. Well, he supposed that was only fair. Because as much as she was teasing him in private, he was keeping her on her toes during their shared duty shifts. By now, he only had to weave his hand close to her torso for her pulse to pick up and her pheromones to fluctuate – no matter whether he had actually activated his armor inlays to magnetize her piercings or not. Pavlovian response and all.

So when he came off a shift just to see her begin changing her nipple piercing right there in his full view, it was only the next step in escalation. She hadn't acknowledged him outright, but neither had she turned to the privacy of her bathroom upon his entry or at least her back to him.

Jazz sat himself on the ground in front of her elevated bed and took in the slight flush to her cheeks, the elevated heart rate and breathing pattern. He made no secret of it at all that he was watching, his head just at the right height to get the full view of her naked breast, the dark aureola with the even darker hair dusting its edges, and the hardened nipple itself. A tiny piece of flesh intended to nurture their young, so sensitive, and yet pierced by what had to be inflexibly hard metal to her. It was interesting to see how she first unscrewed one of the round ball ends, and then took out the small bar. His scanners told him that it left behind a tiny flesh tunnel where her skin had healed around the foreign object, forming a nearly invisible fistula once the jewelry was out.

Her breathing elevated a bit more as she set towards cleaning the nipple and the surrounding aureola. His olfactory sensors could smell some real arousal building as she tried to remain clinical in manipulating one of her body's major erogenous zones. And it only grew stronger as she slowly threaded a captive ball ring through her flesh. Jazz, too, was only barely keeping his responses in check, especially when the metal was halfway through and it was a visible bulge beneath her skin as she poked it around to find the exit hole.

When she had to take a small pair of pliers to actually close the ring to capture the ball, he lost control over his secondary fans. She startled at the sudden noise, looking up at him with the ring still caught in the pliers. He held her gaze for several long seconds, trying to judge that part of her mental state that hadn't already been given away by her bodily reactions. Her eyes were wide and dilated visibly before she quickly looked back down again to finish her task. Her cheeks were reddening, but her arousal only grew stronger.

However, it didn't seem as if she would be the one to start their long overdue conversation, seeing that she quickly put the old jewelry and the pliers away and reached for some breast coverings. Perhaps she had gone a bit too far outside her own comfort zone on that last dare, no matter how unflappable she normally seemed.

Since things were quickly heading towards the awkward lane, Jazz stalled his secondary fans and grabbed the proverbial bull by its horns. “You know, that was really hot.”

She inhaled sharply and flushed. Almost shyly, she peeked up from where her hair had fallen into her face. “You... you liked that?”

“Yup,” he nodded with a deliberately relaxed but non-leering grin on his face and sprawled backwards until he could lean his shoulders against his berth. “You really surprised at that? After all, you've already worked out that I'm quite fascinated by your piercings.”

Fastening the clasps of her bra, she finally relaxed a bit and gathered her hands in her lap. “I know,” she smiled slightly. “But I didn't think... think that you'd also be interested in me – them – in _that_ way.”

“And which way would that be?”

Maggie blinked a couple of times and tried to answer. Then she chuckled. “You know, I have no idea. If you were human, I'd say that you were definitely flirting, signaling that you want to get laid. Especially when you turned on those fans. But... you're not human, are you?”

“Nope, I'm not.”

She leaned forward in curiosity. “Then what did that, all of it, mean?”

“That I want to get laid,” he delivered in an absolutely dead-pan expression. Her exasperation was funny enough that he couldn't help but laugh. “No, I'm serious. It's just that there's too many secondary associations inherent in your language and your biology. You do remember that our pleasure responses are geared solely towards social bonding, don't you? Hell, we didn't even have a word for 'sex' until we met the first organic species.”

Maggie frowned and tugged at one of her blond locks. “You had sex but didn't have a word for it? Or did you only start having sex after you met the first organics?”

Jazz shook his head. “That's exactly the problem – for you, social bonding and reproduction are so intertwined that 'sex' always means both. You come from the other part of the spectrum – you don't have a word for sex purely for non-reproductive purposes. I think the closest I can come in your language is 'exchanging pleasure'. Of course we were exchanging pleasure even before we met organics. And of course we have words for it. Several in fact, depending on the mode. Touching and EM-fields, linking processors, spark merging. We just didn't have anything for pleasure in combination with reproduction, sex.”

This one seemed to take her aback. She wore a highly concentrated expression, an indication that her processors were once again working full power and her bodily urges taking the backseat. “You're right, that sounds quite strange. Exchanging pleasure.” She tasted the expression for a bit. “So when you said you want to get laid, you were talking about... exchanging pleasure?”

He smiled in satisfaction, “Got it in one.”

She cocked her head thoughtfully although there was a brief spike in her arousal. “Doesn't even sound as... strange as having sex does, considering I'm human and you're... well, not. You _did_ mean that you want to exchange pleasure with me, didn't you? What does 'exchanging pleasure' mean for a Cybertronian?”

Oh yes, she was biting. Her curiosity was once again coming to the forefront.

Jazz shrugged slightly. “Well, depends on the level. Simple tactile overload is about as meaningful as a massage to relax. On the lowest level, it isn't much more than 'you scratch my back, I scratch yours'. Most of us are built in a way that we can't even reach every single spot on our bodies for cleaning. It's pretty common for mechs to help each other out in the washracks, both cleaning and tactile. Mostly not much more than an act of physical maintenance. That's where the armor inlays come in handy, by the way, another source of tactile stimulation. Of course, the more you like the mech, the more it is also emotionally satisfying.

“With mechs you get along with well, it's quite common to go on to linking processors. Plug'n'Play.” He winked at Maggie as she nearly swallowed her tongue and barked a laugh. “Depending on the depth of the connection, I would say it can compare to anywhere from sex between friends, casual lovers, to making love. Just, not exclusive in any way because we don't have your biological pair-bonding imperative. It's not unusual for groups of mechs to crystallize that regularly plug and play with each other. Or the other way round – that an isolated group of mechs starts to regularly plug and play with each other if they are long enough together.”

Her eyes widened as several clues fell into place. “You, Prime, Ratchet, Ironhide and Bumblebee?”

“Amongst others.” Clearly, the idea that Optimus Prime regularly exchanged pleasure, with various different mechs at that, was breaking her brain a bit. Or maybe it was the thought of Ironhide or Ratchet lowering enough firewalls to get intimate. Jazz chuckled. “As I said, we aren't exclusive. But Prime's core cadre isn't only a Plug'n'Play group, but also a Resonant Group. Harmonizing, resonant, synched, whichever way you want to translate it. But I think resonant hits it best. That is what happens when sparks are merged often enough. Their frequencies align until there are enough similarities between individuals that one can talk of a characteristic group frequency.”

She nodded slowly, mind reeling. “So, where in this pattern do I come in?”

“Mmh, I'd say somewhere between tactile and plug'n'play.” He pulled a small grimace. “That's the problem with trying this across species boundaries. You've been with us for more than three years already, are a great help, like us and get along with us just smashing. Hell, you even room with me, and if you were a mech I'd have offered you some tactile action a long time ago. But because of your hardware and your culture, what is simple tactile for me is already some mid-level plug'n'play for you. Not to mention the whole xeno factor that's biologically hardwired into you.”

Jazz shrugged. “I thought you know me well enough by now to lower the xeno hurdle somewhat, and that you'd be comfortable enough around us to not immediately run for the hills when a non-human starts talking about as big a cultural taboo as inter-species sex is for you. Anyway, as much time as you spend with us you're nearly one of us already, so I thought I'd ask if you were interested in doing some pleasure exchange our style. Your species _is_ capable of understanding pleasure for social bonding, after all.”

Maggie snorted with a crooked grin. “Not to mention that you apparently like my piercings so much that you're practically drooling every time you get a look at them.”

“That too,” he smirked completely unashamed. It was nice that she was still willing to joke. “They _are_ one of the hottest things I've seen humans come up with, after all.”

Again she fell silent for several seconds. Jazz just crossed his pedes and leaned back, content to let her think things over. He wasn't going to push her in any direction; at this point in time, that would be highly counterproductive. He had laid his cards on the table, and now it was her turn to decide if she wanted to continue playing with him or if they went back to the way things were.

Sooner than he had anticipated, she focused on him again with a thoughtful expression. “Let's say that I agree to... exchanging pleasure. How exactly would that work between us? And what would you expect from me?”

Hook, line and sinker. Giddy electrons spun through his neural net at the closeness of victory. Now Jazz only had to reel her in slowly so that she didn't panic and hurt herself or him before the deal was sealed. And Jazz was slightly disturbed by how his processors mixed and mangled human metaphors. Oh, well...

“I thought we'd play it by the ear, figure out what you're comfortable with, figure out what works for me, that kind of thing. It's supposed to be an exchange of mutual pleasure, not one enduring and getting damaged. I expect you to be brutally honest in that regard, even if you feel ashamed or don't want to hurt me. It would hurt me a lot more figuring out afterwards that you've been in pain physically or emotionally every time I thought we were just doing something fun. I'll be equally honest with you. That's practically _the_ rule for bridging such a huge gap in both species and culture, even more so because we're pioneering that aspect.

“The second rule is that there are things about you that I will never be able to understand, and that there are things about me that you will never be able to understand. Live with them, get to know them, and accept them without judging. Especially when it concerns spark-deep coding or, in your case, gut-reactions and instincts. The third rule? Be yourself and have fun,” Jazz grinned sharkishly.

Drawing a face, Maggie huffed, “You sound like a marriage counselor. Sure you didn't copy your advice from one of our websites?”

He chuckled and shook his head. “I just rephrased what all our sparklings are taught about exchanging pleasure before their creator guides them through their first mutual share.”

When she closed her eyes and lifted a hand to pinch the bridge of her nose, Jazz realized he had said something wrong.

“Jazz?” she asked sweetly, “I hope I've just misheard you. Sparklings are your children, and creators are their parent figures, aren't they?”

“Yes?”

She sighed explosively. “If you're testing me on how honest I can be, that's not the right way to go. In case you really don't know, you've just hit two very big no-no's in one sentence. Children having sex is the one thing, and parent-child or teacher-child intimacy is the other. I really don't care if it's not a moral or physical problem for you because you're asexual and you don't have sex in our sex kind of way and it's one of the most natural things to you. But please don't talk to me anymore about exchanging pleasure with anyone or anything I might consider underage or unable to truly consent. It goes against far too many of my fundamental believes.”

Oopsie. He had forgotten to factor in how humans were pretty much incapable of exchanging pleasure, both hardware and software wise, until they reached a certain point in maturity. Of course they would have strong taboos about sexual contact with their young to avoid harming them.

He should probably keep quiet then about the code uploads creators regularly did for sparklings starting nearly from the point a spark met its shell. Because code uploads weren't only similar to plug'n'play; code uploads _were_ plug'n'play. The reset of overload was necessary for the programs to settle correctly into the sparkling's boot sector and operating system.

Jazz scratched his helmet to imitate the human gesture of embarrassment. His EM-field reeked with it, but she couldn't sense that so he had to show her gestures in the visible spectrum. He'd have to brief the others on that huge cultural gap so that they didn't make the mistake of mentioning it anywhere close to sensitive human ears. They could do without being labeled as child molesters in the public. “Seems like we've hit on the first topic we need to put into the 'accept without judging' drawer. I won't mention it again unless you want to know more. Alright with you?”

“Alright with me.” She rubbed her forehead hard like she always did when she had a headache. “Man, what a mood-killer. I believe we were having a mixture of flirting, xeno sex-ed and 'How to Live a Happy Love-Life' counsel all rolled up in one? Can we go back to that, please?”

Yes, Maggie was the perfect human for the first exchange of pleasure between a human and a Cybertronian. Either she had already known some variation of the Sparkling Three – which he probably should find another name for considering she didn't want sparklings associated with pleasure in any way – or she was very good at applying rules. Probably a bit of both, if he was the one to judge. Her basic character traits certainly made her quite resilient to the kind of surprise he had unintentionally sprung on her.

“Sure, sure,” he agreed, amiable to the idea of going back to hashing out exchange details. “What else do you want to know?”

Her frown was still pronounced, but at least it was getting lighter. “You've told me about what to expect from you in general, but nothing about how this is going to work in particular. Let's say that I agree for a test run. What would be the first thing you would like to do?”

That was easy. “Touch your piercings. Tell you to play with them. Let me play with them while you overload yourself.” He would be able to go on for several minutes. Probably a sign that he was obsessing a bit too much over the combination of metal and soft organic skin. At least she didn't find the ideas repulsive at all, judging by the sudden return of her arousal. “What about you?” he forcefully pulled himself back to their talk. “What would be the first thing you would like to do?”

Maggie scowled, fidgeting with her fingers. “Find out what _you_ like. This pleasure exchange is mutual, isn't it? I'm sure that the internet has you pretty well-informed of all the different ways to turn on a human, but I'm flying blind here with you. Gimme a break. I don't even know what the Cybertronian equivalent of orgasm is, let alone what it looks like. Or if you have one at all.” She halted briefly as her processors pointed something out to her. A sheepish smile spread across her features. “Oh, you were talking about overload just now, so I guess you do have one. Sounds quite electrical. I could probably try the washing and cleaning thing you mentioned if you can guarantee I won't get zapped by an overload. Or I could buy a couple bar magnets, wave them across your armor and hope that's enough before my arms fall off.”

She was babbling, a sure sign she was nervous. He hadn't seen her this nervous in his presence since he had interviewed her for her position of his direct human subordinate. And candidate for human partner, but she hadn't known that one. If he didn't stop her, she would talk herself into a corner by trying to talk herself out of some perceived corner, and she'd inevitable realize at some point that she was about to put her foot square in her mouth. And he didn't want things to progress that far.

He laughed slightly. “Sure, both washing and magnets sounds good to me. Don't worry, there's no way a simple overload could harm you. You're thinking of something like Red fritzing, when static and lightening crackles around his horns? That's why we call it a malfunction, not a random overload, because there's nothing pleasurable about it when his currents get this dangerously high. His horns are an attempt to try and bleed off some excess charge before it really fries his internal systems. Overloads don't come from our main power lines, but from our neural network. Think hundreds and thousands of processors, wires hardly thicker than a molecule. The voltage we run there might create enough static to give you a light sting, but anything dangerous to you would have trashed my systems a long time before that.”

An idea struck him, and he perked right up. “I think it would be good if I got Ratchet to teach you some basics about our mechanics. Since he's also been teaching Mikaela, he probably knows best what humans need to know about us and how to explain it. Even if he probably hasn't covered overload mechanics with her yet.”

“Sex-ed with Ratchet?” she squeaked mortified.

Jazz didn't know whether it was the 'Sex-ed' part or the 'Ratchet' part that alarmed her more, but he was pretty sure that it was the combination that had _her_ nearly fritzing. He frowned. “Another no-go topic?”

She shook her head quickly, still wide-eyed. “No, no, not like that. But – Jazz, does that mean you'll tell him we... you... we're are trying for an interspecies pleasure exchange? And even if you don't, the topic will pretty much... It's _Ratchet_! Grouchy doctor – medic – mechanic, and... Guh!” She threw her hands in the air in frustration.

Jazz didn't quite know what to make of her biosignals. On the one hand, there was alarm, adrenaline that had just been released in copious amounts. Then there was an embarrassed flush to her cheeks, but underlying all that there was something that he could only identify as the beginning stages of arousal.

Thankfully though, her words had given him enough of a clue that it might be one of her human privacy conventions that was the issue. He shuttered and unshuttered his optics a couple of times. “Eh, not to disturb you, but... I'd be surprised if there's a single mech on base that doesn't know I've been trying to initiate a pleasure exchange. Your human senses can't see it when I activate my armor inlays, but to us it's pretty visible. And we were hardly discrete in the command center.”

Her jaw snapped shut audibly and she froze. “You know,” she finally managed to grind out, “I'm not sure which one of us I should hit over the head for this. Myself for forgetting about how you told me mechs can see your invisible armor inlays, or you for not pointing it out to me any sooner that you've practically been molesting me in public for all and sundry to see. Please excuse me for a moment.”

Well, the arousal in her scent was pretty much a thing of the past now. Instead, she got up all stiff and rigid and went into her bathroom without looking at him. There was a mire of embarrassment, anger and shame in both her scent and body language, but what worried him the most was the small jolt of fear he had noticed.

Damn, seemed like he had really blown it. More importantly, he didn't even understand yet just _how_ he had blown it. Or why she had reacted so strongly. It wasn't like he hadn't taken care to keep his actions down to something her fellow humans would interpret as innocuous. He had thought that as long as nobody realized something sexual was going on, it was still within acceptable parameters for the human in question. But apparently, he had forgotten to factor in some pretty big variable in his calculations.

Worriedly, he listened to her running some water and splashing her face.

When she came out again, there was a resolute set to her jaw even as hairline was still wet. She sat down on her bed again, but contrary to her earlier relaxation, she held herself very straight now. She didn't scoot backwards to cross her legs; instead, she sat right there at the edge to look him straight in the optics. Once again, he was very glad that Maggie was a determined and curious woman who didn't hesitate to speak her mind even if it led to confrontation.

“Alright, buster,” she began, “I think we should have a talk about the difference between what 'professional behavior' means to you and to me. I would hate to find myself out of a job just because I've been trying to satisfy my curiosity. So. Talk.”

Damn, Jazz had known that interspecies communication was difficult, but he had never suspected it would be _that_ hard. Not when they had been working and talking with humans for nearly five years now and had never run into that kind of problem.

He once again shuttered and unshuttered his optics, completely baffled by her lateral jump in logic. “It would be nice if you could explain to me how you got from mechs seeing me use my armor inlays with you, to becoming afraid of losing your job. I don't get it.”

Maggie spluttered, apparently finding him equally incomprehensible. “I don't get it what there's _not_ to get! Have you looked at surveys for reasons employees get fired? Having inappropriate relations on the job and doing personal business on company time are both right amongst the top ten! When word reaches Prime of what we've been doing in the control room, he'd be more than justified in letting me go!”

“But why?”

She threw her arms in the air. “Because you're paying me and I'm not delivering all you're paying me for and even distracting others from doing _their_ job? That enough of a reason for you?”

Jazz paused to go over that ludicrous-sounding statement again. There were just so many assumptions implicated by her words that he didn't really know where to start. Carefully he asked, “What exactly do you think we are paying you for?”

“Security analysis, the human factor of it at least, being your go-to girl for questions about human capabilities, research into which of your technologies could be made available for us humans, technical liaison to human governments, what it says in my contract!”

A quick ping to Optimus got him a copy of the document, and she had pretty much hit all the pertinent points. Still, he didn't get it. He cocked his head. “Then would you do less or a worse job if there had been a lower salary in your contract?”

“No!” she exclaimed with considerable alarm. Then she got angry. “You think I'm only in it for the money? I thought you knew me better than that!”

Jazz nodded, pleased at her outrage. He hadn't misjudged her after all. “I do. That is why I don't understand why you think _we_ are only in it for the money.”

“... What?”

There was too much confusion on her face to stop Jazz from giving an irritated twitch of his armor. “You work for us for more reasons than the money we pay you. Then why do you think we can't pay you for more reasons than the work you do?”

“But... what...” She opened and closed her mouth a couple of times as words failed her. Then she shook her head harshly. “Sorry, I just can't wrap my head around that. That's just not how business works. Getting paid for things outside the job that aren't quantifiable, like character or personality? That sounds just too outlandish to me. In business, nothing counts except for hard facts.”

The irritated twitch of Jazz's armor threatened to become angry. There was just so much _wrong_ with such a way of thinking. It was what had, in the end, led to Cybertron's downfall – Megatron had tried to get more and more mechs for his armies, as if mechs were nothing more than a business commodity instead of living and thinking sparks. “And are we business?”

She inhaled to start on what probably would be yet another heated retort, before she suddenly stopped. She deflated with a surprised 'oh' and grimaced. “Sorry, I think I see what you're trying to get at now. No, you're not business to me. I consider you my friend. Family sometimes. And you, Jazz, consider me the same, don't you? I was so set on trying not to presume anything that I completely ignored the many times you practically told me I'm family – friend – whatever. But even with family... work is work and play is play, and it just... Gah!”

“I think your culture has trained you too much on thinking of work and life as separate things. The work we do here? It's not work, it's our life. If _you_ don't like it here, you can ask for a transfer or just quit. _We_ can't do that.” Not when quitting would lead to deactivation.

Maggie looked at him thoughtfully. “And since work is life for you, you don't mind life getting in the way of work?”

Jazz snorted. She still didn't understand that life and work were one and the same. And how family – groups to them – factored in. “Getting _in the way,_ yes. But life _and_ work, that one Optimus doesn't mind. He knows that we give our best, and what could he demand more?”

“So none of you will hold it against me that I was... acting in a very unprofessional manner?”

“Of course not. I know that you don't let your interactions with me influence the quality of your work. In fact, interacting with me is part of your contractual obligations.”

She nodded slowly, but still with more anxiousness than Jazz would have expected. “You're you, but Prime's the one I need to prove myself to. Are you sure that he would see things the same way?”

Jazz was completely baffled by that. “But he's in my Resonant Group!” he exclaimed. He paused as he tried to elicit just how this new misunderstanding could have happened. “You don't know what 'Resonant Group' means to us, do you?”

Maggie mutely shook her head.

“Didn't think so. Resonant Group is like...” Jazz was fishing for words the human language just didn't have. “... like family, lovers, best friends all rolled into one. A telepathic One, because we're sharing regularly. It means Optimus knows you almost as well as I do. He also knows what I think of you. A Resonant Group can be considered pretty much as one mind as long as they merge regularly. You don't have to prove yourself towards Optimus in any way because you have already proven yourself to me.”

And once again, Maggie froze. “You really don't have any concept of privacy or modesty, do you? Optimus Prime, he already... he knows what we've – I've been doing the past couple weeks? And he doesn't – doesn't mind?”

Jazz could see how Maggie was trying hard not to close up in embarrassment. If there were any other humans willing to do some pleasure exchange in the future, they would need to be told about Resonant Groups and their implications in advance to nip such misunderstandings in the bud.

Jazz vented. “Of course not. If you were a bot, you'd have been involved in pleasure exchanges with me, with all of us, pretty much from the beginning. And I bet the two of us would have done some processor linking too by now. That's normal. Completely normal. Why would Optimus mind?”

She blinked a couple of times and then breathed deeply. “Ok, I guess that's my human sentiments. I'll... I'll try and not mind that pretty much every bot on this base knows that... gah, sorry 'bout that. But if you ever, _ever_ tell a human about it, I'll take you apart to the last screw, you hear me? Gaining a reputation as sexually abnormal or easy doesn't only kill careers, but also social life. And _you_ don't need the reputation, either, believe me. Two words: Anal probing. Enough said.”

The reference was hilarious. Honestly, why in the world did humans think that their rectal passages were the most fascinating thing for alien life? Jazz tried to simulate innocence by widening his optics as far as his mechanics allowed. “So no anal probing for pleasure exchange?”

The spike of alarm in her scent was telling. But even more telling was the slowly blooming arousal that followed once the alarm ebbed. And then she glared at him. “Don't you dare!”

If Jazz hadn't already resigned himself to the multiple layers of humans tended to communicate on – with contradicting statements at that – he would have been hopelessly lost. As it was, he translated the multitude of conflicting information that she wasn't completely against the idea of anal sex, but that right now it was definitely out of the question.

“Awww,” he pouted with exaggerated sadness, “no anal probing for poor old Jazz.” Then he perked up to a degree that he knew she would find comical. “But some nipple play, yes?”

Maggie groaned and let herself flop backwards onto the bed. Then she grabbed a pillow, pounded it a couple of times onto her head, and then proceeded to smother herself with it. Nonetheless, Jazz could make out the muffled 'Yes, you horndog.'

He couldn't help himself and modulated his voice with even more innocence than before. “Right now?”

For a long time, there was no response at all from her. Well, except for hesitation tied into excitement so closely that they couldn't really be separated into individual feelings. So Jazz was pretty sure she had heard him at least.

Finally, she lifted the pillow from her face and sought contact with his optics. “You want to?” she asked quietly.

“Yes.”


	3. Chapter 3

Without breaking their shared gaze, she arched her back until she could reach behind herself to undo the clasp of her bra. She was still lying on the bed, but she managed to divest herself of her chest coverings without too many acrobatics. Slowly, she let it slide to the side, revealing her ample chest – and the piercing she had just changed.

Jazz just stared at it, the metal, the soft flesh, the captive bead that had slid up until it rested right next to her pebbled nipple. Further down, there was the curved barbel for her naval piercing, but he had seen it often enough. Her nipple ring though...

“Go ahead,” she whispered, apparently equally as entranced by the situation as Jazz.

He briefly focused on her eyes before slowly extending his hand. He could hear her pulse quicken the closer he came, and so did her breathing. Her scent carried some tension, but that only seemed to be a catalyst for her arousal.

Unconsciously she liked her lips as he hovered his hand just above and to the side of her piercing. Equally as slowly as he had done everything so far, he fed power to the armor inlays in his digits. And gradually, the piercing began to follow his call.

The ring twitched before sliding a bit towards Jazz's digits. With every twitch, Maggie's breath hitched a little, but she didn't move in any way to stop him. So Jazz increased the current and tried moving his digit. When he closed the distance to less than an inch, the magnetic field was strong enough that the ring lifted until it was perpendicular to her skin, held in place only by the flesh of her nipple.

Jazz's secondary cooling fans kicked in with a vengeance.

She quickly looked at him again, and it was only then that Jazz realized she had been watching her nipple just as attentively as he had done. “You really like my piercing this much?”

Jazz nodded happily. “Yep. Hottest thing since solar fusion.” That drew a surprised laugh. “Tell me when I'm hurting you?”

She laughed again, a bit nervous and... even more aroused? “Sure, sure. You're doing just fine.” She hesitated a bit as if trying to say something else, but then she remained quiet.

Jazz twitched one of his magnetized claws, and the ring – so tiny compared to the pad of his finger – followed again. “If you need to say something say it. The Interfacing Three, brutal honesty, remember?”

'Interfacing Three' hopefully sounded better to her than 'Sparkling Three'.

She bit her lip and looked away. “Alright, in the name of brutal honesty...” Gathering her courage, she met his optics again. “You said I should tell you when you're starting to hurt me. But sometimes, when the timing and the circumstances are right, I might actually... not mind a bit of pain. You know? A bit only, nothing serious,” she hastened to add, “but... well, yeah.”

It had clearly cost her a lot to say that. An entirely new frisson of electrons spun through Jazz. He let it lighten his optics a bit to give her a detectable sign of his arousal. “Thanks for trusting me with that, Maggie,” he purred, entirely too excited at this new discovery. “As long as it is still pleasurable for you, I completely understand. I also like it rough sometimes.”

And wasn't _that_ a truth. All of his Resonant Group could testify to that, that Jazz could get quite revved up when Ironhide handled his sensory horns a bit less gently than normal. Or when Ratchet dug his fingers into the crevices of Jazz's armor a bit harder than necessary. Or when Optimus...

And Jazz should stop that thought thread before he overloaded right there, right then. He twitched his armor to release some of the charge burning through his neural lines. “Anyway, if I could link to your processors, I'd take you up on that in a pinch. A link would show me what it feels like to you what I'm doing, so that I can adjust my strength accordingly. But I can't, and I'm not a hundred percent certain on your design tolerances. I first need to know what _doesn't_ cause you pain before edging above that. We've got enough time to push the boundaries later on. You alright with that?”

Her eyes darkened and she smiled shyly at him. “I'd like that,” she breathed. “And don't think I'm going to forget what _you_ like, either. I think you owe me an interesting talk about how we could make 'rough' work for you. But for now,” she waved her hand magnanimously “go ahead and play your fill.” She smirked. “I know you're dying to find out if you can get me off with piercings only.”

Oh yes, finally the playful Maggie from the beginning, the one that had brazenly changed her nipple piercing in his plain view, was back.

Jazz bared his dentals in an answering smirk. “Oh, I think you are confusing something there. I think it's me who is going to get off on your piercings only. And I think you ought to use your nimble human fingers to help me in giving you pleasure.”

Her eyes gleamed with the challenge. “Ought I? I think I should rather let you do the entire work. So that you learn how to handle humans, you know?”

“But I couldn't let you have all the fun while I do all the work.”

“Well, if _this_ is your definition of work,” she moved her hand to her other breast and started kneading it, “then I'd like to see what you consider pleasure.”

Jazz jiggled his digits a bit, and the magnetized nipple ring jiggled together with it. “You would, wouldn't you?” He grinned. “If you're a good girl, I might show you.”

“Bring it on!”

He let his smirk widen and let his calculations run a last time. It wasn't like he he had done an intensive study of human pornography to find out what human pleasure exchange consisted of, no siree, not the Jazz-Meister. Of course not.

Well, alright, he had done a bit of that. But there were enough security cameras all over the human world that he hadn't actually needed much Pay-per-view information – pay-per-view which he hadn't paid for, of course. Amazingly few humans seemed aware of how much camera surveillance existed, often giving unintended shows when they thought themselves alone in alleys or other similarly deserted places. Those security cameras mostly had lousy security of their own, and they had portrayed a more realistic picture of human sexuality. Both body-size wise and attitude wise. Still, the role the human sex drive played in their life was mind-boggling.

Anyways, he had a pretty good idea what Maggie would probably like, and so he offered her his wrist. It was a bit thicker around than her thigh and as such it should be ideal, provided that he locked it so that none of her soft organic parts got caught in any seams when he moved.

“Hop on,” he grinned. “Vibrator, Jazz-style.”

At first she looked a bit perplexed, but then she caught on. With a vengeance and a flush so bad that he didn't even need to assert his chemical receptors to verify her pleasure had just spiked dramatically, she got up and straddled his wrist.

Shyly, but at the same time a gleaming humor in her eyes, she smiled at him. “Vibrator, eh? Kinky, kinky...”

It took a bit of rearranging and some grimacing as metallic parts apparently poked her in uncomfortable places, but eventually she found a position that fit her tastes. Her pubic mound pressed against the smooth rise of what would be his main headlight in alt-mode, her nearly bare behind against the back of his claws. It left her genital opening almost exactly above his wrist port – an interesting configuration that he'd probably explore some other time. Because it would be just too interesting to see how she would respond if he extended his hardline cable up into her as if docking in a matching port.

For now though, he had something different planned.

Locking all his hydraulics and turning off his shock absorbers from wrist to shoulder, he started the combustion engine that came with his alt-mode. It rumbled to life with a low-frequency purr, and her eyes grew wide. He adjusted the power a bit, keeping in mind the resonant frequencies of his metallic parts, until he was pretty sure most of the vibrations of his engine dawdling at seven hundred rpm got transferred to her flesh.

“Shit,” she gasped and instinctively moved her hips to press her genitals closer to his metal. Her hands scrabbled to find a hold on his smooth armor and eventually settled for gripping the headlight part at the edges.

Jazz counted the move as a complete success; not least of all because her curling fingers were deliciously close to some very sensitive wires in his forearm.

“You like that?”

Maggie nodded enthusiastically. “Yesss,” she hissed as her nodding moved her body a bit more into the vibrations. “Feels – feels unfair that you won't tell me what I can do for you in return right now.” Her instinctive motions made her arch her back, her head thrown back to let her hair fall down her back and present her breasts all the better to him.

Jazz wasn't sure how much of that was deliberate, but the pebbled nipple with the steel through it looked exquisite as it trembled with her motions. He once again activated the armor inlays in his free hand and ran his claws across the front of her body. And the ring followed him faithfully.

“Mmmh,” he hummed, pleased at her reactions. “Let me have a go at you first, and then I'll see if I can talk Prowler into switching his shift with mine. Then we'll have enough time for some... explorations. Your size makes it a bit... impractical to return the favor right now.”

She shivered and unconsciously tightened her fingers around his armor plate. “Sounds good to me. Damn, how'm I supposed to ride in your alt now when all I'll be able to think about is how your engine makes such an awesome vibrator?”

“You'll survive,” he chuckled in a deep resonant frequency that he was quite sure she responded favorably to.

And she didn't disappoint. Was that her lubricant starting to seep from her opening?

Jazz wondered why she wore that string for underwear; it didn't do anything to hide her assets, and neither could it provide much of a stop-gap for her natural fluids. But he had already known that human intercourse tended to get messy, and he was prepared to deal with liquids leaking onto him. From a certain point of view, humans _always_ leaked – a bit more or less of that didn't make too much of a difference. And if it only gave him more of a reason to make her clean his wrist components later on, it was perfect.

But his goal was to have already overloaded once by then; for one to show Maggie that he really appreciated her, for another so that it was absolutely clear that the attraction was mutual.

He activated a specially installed resonant coil that was close to a cluster of neural lines deep in his abdominal motion center. It was a somewhat... controversial modification – at least between him and Ratchet. None of the others of his resonant group seemed to have much of a problem with the fact that he had more or less hard-wired a pleasure toy into his frame.

Well, alright, they didn't have much trouble with the toy's _existence_. They did have some hesitation as for _why_ he had installed it though. Because as a Spec-Ops mech he needed to have a hundred percent control over his responses – even things as autonomous as pleasure. Mechs close to overload were often quite a fount of information, or exceedingly vulnerable towards the assassination side of Spec-Ops.

So Jazz activated the coil on a very low setting, appreciating the excruciatingly slow charge it was inducing in his neural lines. It wasn't that he didn't get any charge at all from stimulating Maggie and playing with her piercings; however, it wouldn't be nearly enough to achieve overload. And their first time just _had_ to go well so that a good precedent was set for their further interactions.

Maggie's behavior so far was indicating very good chances. She had taken to grinding her hips rhythmically against Jazz's wrist, her breathing pattern having accelerated and starting to hitch. Every time Jazz passed his armor inlay in front of her chest, the hitch got more pronounced, and she was arching into his non-touch.

“Damn, you're good at that,” she breathed, her eyes half-lidded as she gazed up at him. “Can you...” a small shudder as the armor inlay passed in front of her, “can you gim'me more?”

With the coil-induced charge now slowly adding to the one generated by the sight of her abandoning herself to pleasure, Jazz was starting to feel needier himself. He diverted some of the charge to his optics to make them glow and some to his dermal plates to gather a low amount of static. Both were actions for her benefit so that she could tell he was getting more aroused. Any normal bot would have sensed it from his EM fields, but humans just didn't have the necessary sensory equipment. They didn't even see a continuous photon spectrum, blind as they were to their TV's strange approximation of true color vision (1). Honestly, to think that red plus green equaled yellow...

Whatever. He had thought long and hard about how to make this trans-species pleasure exchange work, and he'd be damned if it was doomed to failure because of simple equipment incompatibilities.

He smirked. “You want more? Then how about this...”

Slowly he lifted the arm with her straddling the wrist, making it so that most of her weight was supported by his wrist. Her knees just barely touched her bed anymore, grinding her moist flesh harder against his vibrating armor. It felt downright _sinful_ to have soft organic flesh undulating against his components – the armor plates themselves didn't feel much, but her skin was pliable enough that even without doing anything it molded itself to his form and managed to hit more hidden sensors, especially at his wrist-port. There was just enough closeness to feel the touch of her outer lips, their moisture, but nothing beyond a teasing hint. Next time, he promised himself, he would make use of the hardline cable.

The increased pressure on her pleasure center caused her eyes to widen as she froze and moaned. Jazz didn't know whether the position was going to be sustainable for long on her side, so he busied himself with stimulating her further. He revved his engine a couple of times to see what kind of effect the changing vibrations had on her, and judging from her sounds it was definitely a hit.

“Shit, yes, like this,” she groaned as she curled further into his armor.

On yet another pass of his claws in front of her body, she took the opportunity to latch on to them. A bit surprised he held entirely still, not willing to injure her in any way. When she started rubbing her breasts against his claws and shuddered, he gathered that she wanted more touch. Alright, he could oblige her. But first things first...

“I thought you said I should learn your body all on my own?”

With a glare that wouldn't have looked wrong on a bot with lasers for optics, she only pressed herself against his claw harder. “You're taking so long!”

Jazz smirked. “You never said I had to overload you quickly. Now, hands away, that's cheating.”

Reluctantly she obeyed, even though her genital opening produced even more lubricant at his words. “Then get _on_ with it!”

She leaned backwards this time, her small hands and fingers finding purchase against the claw belonging to the locked wrist she was sitting on. She grabbed hold of two of his digits, fingers clenching and unclenching around them, her entire body practically vibrating with need. And she was brushing against the sensitive internals of his claws in a most distracting manner.

“Good girl,” he growled.

Another wave of lubricant production – he'd really have to get her to clean his wrist later on; he thought he could feel the liquid seeping into his port and into his internal components. A very interesting feeling.

Slowly, he moved a claw so that he came up against her breast from beneath, doing nothing more than tracing its round shape with the sharp side of his digit. The edge wasn't sharp enough to harm her pliant flesh – his claws were more geared for penetrating hard metal instead of elastic tissue – but she froze nevertheless. A look at her face and a reading of her pheromones assured him that the hint of danger was only more of a turn-on, so he smirked and deliberately caught the edge on her nipple and the piercing.

The whine she produced was most enticing. “Jaaaazz! More, pleeease!”

“What do you want?” he asked despite having a pretty good idea of what she was thinking of. It didn't take robot science to find out that she was as turned on by her piercings as he was, or by just anybody playing with her breasts.

“What- What you did just now, but – harder,” she gasped, “want to feel your- your magnets, your claws on my nipples, and-”, another gasp, “ _more,_ _please! <_/>”

He chuckled again in that frequency that she apparently found very arousing and activated his armor inlays. “Your wish is my command, Mylady!”

Her entire body was covered in perspiration by now, giving her skin a gleaming sheen that wouldn't have been wrong on a bot. Additionally it made her more slippery so that it was less likely that he caught his metal against her skin and injured her that way.

Once again he scraped his claw against the underside of her breast, harder this time according to her specifications. She moaned and arched further into him, giving a shudder. However, she froze completely when he ascended towards her aureola, her nipple, and then the piercing clung to his magnetized armor and dragged against it as he pulled his claw higher and higher. Jazz lost contact with her skin, only the ring still clinging to his armor and pulling her nipple up, and he was starting to wonder if he wasn't hurting her by now. But she didn't say anything so he pulled a tiny bit higher, and then it was enough for the magnetic field to lose contact with the piercing and for her breast and her nipple to bounce back down, and Maggie nearly screamed with what had apparently been exceedingly pleasurable for her.

Oh, she was so deliciously receptive to tactile! He had only seen similar reactions from bots whose charge had been building for ages until a single brush of an armor inlay against a surface-close node could be nearly enough to overload.

Jazz revved his engine a bit, more from the charge growing inside himself than to pleasure her, but it definitely was appreciated by her.

“'gain,” she breathed, eyes widely dilated.

So he did the same thing again, even slower than last time, and she arched and yowled and looked nearly desperate when it brought her so close to orgasm but not actually into.

“Jazz, Jazz, Jazz,” she kept chanting, her fingers clenching spasmodically around his armor plates until he wasn't sure anymore whether the resonant coil inside him or her actions generated more charge.

Emboldened by her reaction and having gathered enough data to make it safe, Jazz swiveled his hand arrangement until he could bring a second digit around for a pincer constellation. And then, without touching her nipple any, he caught her piercing between his claws and tugged. He exerted exactly three quarters of the force on the ring as the magnetic field of his armor inlay had done. To be completely safe, of course.

They froze.

Both his and Maggie's attention was completely focused on that one breast, her breathing so shallow that her stomach was quivering in short pants. She licked her lips and looked up to meet his optics, and Jazz let a bit more of his charge pulse through the illuminatory layer. With a gasp and a shiver she returned her attention to her nipple, completely caught in the thrill of potential danger.

Not one to disappoint, Jazz started slowly manipulating the piercing, moving it up and down a bit, turning it a bit, and tugging on it a bit to see the incredibly soft flesh of her nipple stretch.

It would take so very little strength for him to hurt her so very badly, and yet she trusted him enough to let him play with the steel through her skin like this. To minimize the danger, she had instinctively stopped grinding herself into his wrist so that her upper body could be as still as humanly possible. Her muscles though were completely locked and quivering with the suppressed charge, with the vibrations pouring into her from beneath. It looked so deliciously similar to a mech preparing for tactile overload that Jazz was stunned.

She was breathing so quickly now that she was nearly hyperventilating, only every now and then taking a complete breath. And he kept playing with the piercing, occasionally letting his cool metal brush against her nipple, feeling from the slight shifts in her weight how her vaginal muscles were clenching desperately around nothing at all. Next time, he would definitely see what she'd make of his wrist cable.

Maggie had resumed her litany of repeating his name interspersed with 'please' and 'more', arching into his every tug like she was a puppet. Her flesh looked like it must be turning sore by now, so Jazz tried to bring things to an end. He growled and revved his engine a couple of times, and by the fourth or fifth time she finally found the necessary charge to tilt over into overload with a yowl of pleasure.

Her toes stretched and then curled as she shuddered against his frame, her fingers digging into the space between his armor plates in a desperate bid to hold on. Jazz rumbled very pleased, manipulating the magnetic ring and her nipple throughout her orgasm but with less and less force.

His vocals were getting increasingly laced with static from the charge inside him, and the resonant coil steadily inducing more didn't help any. Just as she was starting to come back to reality, he had to release her piercing and lock all his limbs as his own overload overtook him. He had barely enough time to put his fans on full throttle and divert as much charge as possible to his optics before his entire system shut down and rebooted in a cascade of pleasure.

It didn't take more than half a second for both his haptics and his optics to come back online, but for a processor used to measuring thoughts in nanoseconds it was nearly an eternity. Of course she hadn't moved much, leaning nearly all her weight of her upper body on her hands and looking up at him.

Her voice was still a bit hoarse as she tilted her head curiously. “This was an overload?”

It was highly likely that she hadn't seen more than the brief lighting of his optics before his entire body had stilled for a split second and then resumed its regular operation – without glowing optics, without his engine revving, without the static he had laced his surface plates with. And without the resonant coil inducing charge deep inside him, but she hadn't known about that one in the first place.

“Mmh, yep,” Jazz grinned with a vocoder that once again was free of static now that his charge was gone. “A bit different from yours, and I made it a bit more obvious to human senses than it normally is, but yes – that was me overloading.” It was such a pity that humans couldn't sense electromagnetics. He had been told by multiple mechs that his fields flared very beautifully in overload.

She thought for a while, then nodded. A slow smirk bloomed on her lips. “Alright, I think I can work with that one. Let me down?”

“But of course.” He lowered his wrist back to her berth, and she grimaced a bit at the change in angle of her limbs. She grimaced a bit more when she moved to get off, stretching her legs with a groan as she worked the stiffness out of them.

“You alright?” he asked, a bit concerned. It definitely hadn't been his intention to hurt her or cause her any true discomfort.

Maggie raised an eyebrow as she looked up at him. “I think if I were any more alright, I'd be melting into a puddle of bliss right now.” A naughty smile. “A bit sore, but entirely worth it. What about you?” She flicked her gaze down to his wrist and blushed a bit, “That looks like I got you a bit dirtier than I expected.”

Her lubricants were glistening against his armor and his wrist port, looking like some of it had seeped inside.

Jazz chuckled. “Don't worry, I'm not harmed by a bit of liquid. Well, as long as it's not corrosive, but a pH of 5 is hardly damaging. And it washes off.”

She blushed a bit more. “Let me take a shower, and then I'll help you?”

“Sure,” he said, absolutely delighted. He hadn't even needed to suggest it himself. “There are some very nice and sensitive components in there!”

At first she seemed a bit taken aback, but then she smirked. “I thought you wanted to wait for me to return the favor until you could get Prowl to take your shift?”

“Changed my mind.” Guilelessness dripped from his voice. “Also, it isn't like anyone in my Resonant Group could have missed our overload just now.”

Once again, she froze wide-eyed. With a huff though she regained her wits and shook her head, smiling crookedly. “Resonant Group equals group of permanently watching voyeurs, I get it. Alright, shower first for me, and then it's your turn to give them something to look at. Deal?”

“Deal.”

He watched her saunter off into her bathroom, leaving the door completely open once again. Unselfconsciously she stripped and hopped into the shower beneath his watching optics, maybe shaking her behind a tiny bit more than absolutely necessary.

Good. Jazz smirked. Seemed like their pleasure exchange was going to be a total and complete success. A couple of years to see if they could integrate Maggie into their groups, and then they'd be ready to try it with other humans.

Bumblebee had already mentioned that he was quite interested in how the experiment turned out.  
  
\-- THE END --

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> (1) some relatively simple mathematics and biologies: Humans have three different color receptors – red, green, and blue. To get yellow, you mix red and green. Now, red light has, say, 600nm wave length, and green light has about 520nm. If you add two sine curves of those lengths (which practically is mixing red and green), you will get anything but a sine curve of wave length 560nm (yellow). So, any being that has a receptor for 560nm wavelength vision will be quite perplexed when someone points at a screen and says, there, a nice and yellow sun. Why do we see yellow then? Because while our Red-receptor responds best to 600nm, it is activated by 560nm, too – only to a lesser degree. Same for the Green-receptor – best at 520nm, but somewhat activated at 560nm, too.
> 
> Ergo, when yellow light hits our eyes, Red and Green are medium activated at the same time. They are activated to the same degree when we shine medium red and medium green light into our eyes – we see yellow although there is no yellow light anywhere to see.


End file.
